Taiwan has found itself increasingly in the middle of the growing power struggle between a waning US and a rising China.

Taiwan is recognized by both the UN and the vast majority of the world’s nations including (officially) the United States under the One China policy – but Taiwan’s pro-independence circles have nonetheless enjoyed large amounts of financial and political support from Washington and has been a point of contention in the region and between Beijing and Washington for decades.

The most recent example of this – reported by the Taipei Times in their article, “Two Washington-based pro-democracy NGOs to establish offices in Taipei,” – was the increased footprint of Washington’s notorious regime change front – the National Endowment for Democracy.

Venezuela has reportedly resumed direct oil shipments to China after brutal US sanctions against the Central American nation forced the trade to go underground for more than a year.

Two China-flagged very large crude carriers (VLCC) with the capacity to transport some nearly 2 million barrels of crude each loaded Venezuelan heavy crude at the Jose terminal in recent days, Reuters reported Friday citing internal documents from Venezuela’s state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) and Refinitiv Eikon vessel-tracking data.

One of the vessels, the Xingye, departed from Venezuela on Thursday signaling Singapore as its destination, Eikon data showed. The other carrier -- the Thousand Sunny -- has not yet set sail, according to the report, which noted that both tankers were owned by a PDVSA-PetroChina joint venture until earlier this year when PetroChina assumed full ownership.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has urged his troops not to fear death and focus on preparing to win wars while addressing military commanders.

He told his armed forces on Wednesday to step up training under combat conditions and 'not fear death and hardship', reported state media, citing the leader.

Xi has previously called for military readiness amid spiking political tensions between Beijing and other countries, particularly the US and self-ruled Taiwan, over coronavirus pandemic, territorial disputes and human rights.

Venezuela has reportedly resumed direct oil shipments to China after brutal US sanctions against the Central American nation forced the trade to go underground for more than a year.

Two China-flagged very large crude carriers (VLCC) with the capacity to transport some nearly 2 million barrels of crude each loaded Venezuelan heavy crude at the Jose terminal in recent days, Reuters reported Friday citing internal documents from Venezuela’s state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) and Refinitiv Eikon vessel-tracking data.

One of the vessels, the Xingye, departed from Venezuela on Thursday signaling Singapore as its destination, Eikon data showed. The other carrier -- the Thousand Sunny -- has not yet set sail, according to the report, which noted that both tankers were owned by a PDVSA-PetroChina joint venture until earlier this year when PetroChina assumed full ownership.

Thailand’s ongoing US-funded anti-government protests aren’t “pro-democracy,” they are anti-Chinese.

Just like in Hong Kong, the US is attempting to create crisis for China and its allies and impede both China’s and Asia’s rise upon the global stage.

I go over the close and ever-growing ties between Thailand and China and why the US is so determined to undo them.

In case tensions between the United States and China escalate into open conflict, President Duterte will always put forward the interest of the Philippines, Malacañang said.

“The President’s stand is clear: he will put the national interest of the Philippines, in view of a clash between the two superpowers,” presidential spokesman Harry Roque Jr. said at a briefing yesterday.

Roque reiterated the President’s policy of “being friends to all, and enemy to no one,” when asked about the country’s position amid the heated exchanges between the two countries.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced his “separation” from the United States on Thursday, declaring he had realigned with China as the two agreed to resolve their South China Sea dispute through talks.

Chinese naval exercises off the coast of the Philippines this summer finally forced the hand of President Rodrigo Duterte, if only for six months.

Despite a friendly relationship with President Trump, the Filipino president had maintained a hard line against the United States while continuing to appease China.

Promised Chinese economic investments, infrastructure development, and jobs were not forthcoming to boost the populist Duterte. Meanwhile, popular support for China is plummeting in the Philippines, and the Filipino military is growing concerned by Chinese activity near the disputed Spratly Islands.

Duterte’s June 1 rapprochement with the U.S. was measured: a six-month delay in the suspension of a Visiting Forces Agreement set to expire with the U.S.

Chinese netizens and observers have derided the newly founded Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), formed by a group of Western lawmakers, as a contemporary era "Eight-Nation Alliance" invasion force, calling it a farce which aims to seek attention and create an anti-China climate among the people of the West.

They added that times have changed and China will not allow being bullied as in the early 20 century and urged some Western politicians to abandon their cold War mentality and cease provoking China.

The formation of IPAC was announced on Friday with 20 high-profile lawmakers in several countries, skeptical of China joining in. The members included US Senators Marco Rubio and Robert Menendez, the European Parliament's Reinhard Bütikofer, and Iain Duncan Smith,

Research organization RAND has run dozens of wargames simulating major conflict scenarios in what it describes as Russia and China’s “backyards.” The wargames suggest that the U.S. forces in those locations would get attacked by a vast array of both conventional and cyber weapons.

RAND Senior Defense Analyst David Ochmanek discussed the simulations at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) in Washington D.C. last week. “In our games, where we fight China or Russia … blue gets its a** handed to it, not to put too fine a point on it,” he said, during a panel discussion. Blue denotes U.S. forces in the simulations.

Xi Jinping, the communist dictator of China and personal pal of Joe Biden, is absolutely thrilled that his country’s latest coronavirus release was a success in shutting down the world and destroying the global economy. And the next step, he says, is to implement a global QR code system to mark and track all humans, giving authoritarian governments like his own the ability to restrict travel if a person is deemed to be “infected.”

During the recent G20 meeting, a who’s who of globalist world leaders, Xi openly called for a “global mechanism” to verify the “health status” of all people on earth. In order to travel, those living in the new world that Xi envisions will have to get “permission” from the government in order to move about, much like cattle that have to be punched with ear tags before moving from pen to pasture.

The defense secretary of the Philippines has warned of the growing risk of conflict in the South China Sea and claimed that if a war erupts, his country will be involved whether the people like it or not.

National Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said in a speech on Wednesday that the Philippines will get dragged into a conflict between the US and China if tensions continue to escalate.

Lorenzana, a retired army general, claimed the confrontation between China and the US and its allies was the most concerning security challenge in the Indo-Pacific region.

“While the US and China continue to assert that their actions are defensive, the danger of miscalculation is ever present, like the near collision of two frigates belonging to the US and China two years ago,” he said.

Prominent Chinese human rights activist Guangcheng Chen denounced the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ruthless population control policies in a powerful address this week.

Speaking Thursday at an international symposium organized by The Anglosphere Society on behalf of “imperiled Christians,” Chen, who has been blind from an early age, explained how he became a human rights activist in Communist China.

While always moved to fight against injustice, Chen said that his direct experience with the CCP’s draconian population control policies, including forced abortions and infanticide, put him over the edge.

“In 2005, some people from my village told me about the violent one-child policy campaign taking place in Shandong,” he said. “I was horrified and felt compelled to act.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s pick to be Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, previously said it is a “mistake” for the United States to “fully decouple” from China.

On Monday, Biden confirmed that he plans to nominate Blinken to become his Secretary of State. Blinken, in September, shared his view that the U.S. would be making a mistake if it decoupled from China, the same position held by the Chinese communist government.

“Trying to fully decouple, as some have suggested, from China … is unrealistic and ultimately counter-productive. It would be a mistake,” Blinken told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce during an online event.

The first lunar sample-return mission since the 1970s is underway.

China's robotic Chang'e 5 mission launched today (Nov. 23) from Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province, rising into the sky atop a Long March 5 rocket at about 3:30 p.m. EST (2130 GMT; 4:30 a.m. on Nov. 24 local time in Hainan).

If all goes according to plan, the bold and complex Chang'e 5 will haul pristine moon samples back to Earth in mid-December — something that hasn't been done since the Soviet Union's Luna 24 mission in 1976.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is spending millions on ad space to spread pro-China messages across the United States. The U.S. Department of Justice reported that in just the last four years, Beijing has spent nearly $19 million in an attempt to push pro-China narratives within the country.

The payments have been on behalf of Beijing-controlled China Daily newspaper, which is an English language publication produced by the CCP that has paid millions of dollars just this year.

Publications like the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Los Angeles Times have received these payments for running pro-China ads on their websites and printed publication. The paid advertisements are designed to look like real news articles, while often containing a pro-Beijing twist on contemporary news events.

China's Manila mission on Tuesday accused the United States of "creating chaos" in Asia, releasing a harsh statement after the US national security adviser backed countries in the region that have disputes with Beijing.

"We've got your back," Robert O'Brien told the Philippines and Vietnam in Manila on Monday. Both states are locked in maritime rows with China. The White House envoy also underscored Washington's commitment to Taiwan.

China's embassy in the Philippines said O'Brien's visit to this region was "not to promote regional peace and stability, but to create chaos in the region in order to seek selfish interests of the US."

The Chinese diplomats urged Washington to "stop inciting confrontation" in the South China Sea, saying late on Monday that the US should also stop making irresponsible remarks on the Taiwan and Hong Kong issues, "which are purely China's internal affairs."

On Monday, the Chinese government announced the eradication of extreme poverty in 832 counties in the East Asian country as part of an official program to overcome the problem of social inequality.

After decreeing the exit from the list of extreme poverty of the last nine counties in the province of Guizhou, the authorities highlighted the plan executed by the Communist Party of China (CCP) since 1980 in the framework of the "war on poverty" which has aimed to overcome the problem of inequality.

However, in 2012 Chinese President Xi Jinping launched a plan to eliminate poverty in rural areas, reducing the number from 98.99 million to just 5.51 million people affected.

The post-Brexit UK is seeking to expand its economic influence and military presence in the Indo-Pacific region and join the US effort to counterbalance a rising China, say British, Japanese, and US academics, describing the opportunities and challenges that Britain is likely to face if it returns to its "East of Suez" strategy.

On 22 November, the UK centre-right think tank Policy Exchange, described as the largest and most influential conservative entity, issued a report titled "A Very British Tilt" that outlined the country's new post-Brexit strategy in the Indo-Pacific Region (IPR).

China has three instructions for a possible incoming President Joe Biden: Obey Beijing, accept the communist country’s supposed economic superiority and remove any existing tariffs.

This was the message signaled to Biden in an op-ed published Sunday by the official propaganda mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the Global Times.

China Wants ‘Incoming Biden Administration’ To Fall In Line
The piece states that the CCP wants a “partnership” with the Biden administration that is “categorically different” than the China-U.S. relationship under President Donald Trump.

As Trump considers next steps in his ongoing crusade to challenge the election results, he appears increasingly set on unleashing a "scorched earth" policy in the already dismal relations China, if only to make any hope for a quick detente between Beijing and the pro-China Biden as difficult as possible.

Overnight, Reuters reported that the Trump admin is close to issuing a list of 89 Chinese aerospace and other companies that would be unable to access U.S. technology exports due to their alleged links to the PLA. Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China Ltd., or Comac, and Aviation Industry Corp. of China Ltd. are among the firms named, Reuters reported, citing a draft copy of the list from the U.S. Commerce Department.

As such a move would further restrict the companies from buying American goods and technology, it would fuel already-heightened tensions between the U.S. and China on fronts ranging from trade and Taiwan to the handling of the coronavirus.

Beijing says it wants to join the pact, which regulates the $70 billion cross-border trade in conventional weapons, as soon as possible. The treaty has been ratified by 104 countries, but US President Trump has U-turned.

China has prioritized the signing of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which seeks to control the trade in conventional arms and reduce human suffering, the country's Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.

Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly a day earlier, State Councilor Wang Yi said Beijing had initiated domestic legal procedures to join the pact.

Two Republican-run Senate committees on Wednesday released new evidence they say shows Hunter Biden and his business associates were working deals as late as 2017 tied to communist China and Russian energy interests, arguing the activities created potential counterintelligence concerns for Joe Biden’s family.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) made the documents public as part of a supplemental report in their ongoing investigation of Hunter Biden’s business activities. The documents include emails, text messages and business memos provided to the committee by Biden family business associate Tony Bobulinski, who is cooperating with both Senate and FBI investigations into the Biden family.

A new proposal to recreate a defunct US Navy fleet in the western Pacific could provide the US with another way to confront China in the South China Sea, but could also alienate regional partners at the same time.

US Navy Secretary Kenneth Braithwaite has proposed refounding the US First Fleet and basing it in the Indo-Pacific region, possibly Singapore, at the southern tip of the South China Sea.

“We want to stand up a new numbered fleet,” Braithwaite said Tuesday, at the Naval Submarine League’s annual symposium, according to USNI News. “And we want to put that numbered fleet in the crossroads between the Indian and the Pacific oceans, and we’re really going to have an Indo-PACOM [Indo-Pacific Command] footprint.”

At least some of the ballistic missiles that China’s People’s Liberation Army fired into the South China Sea during an exercise earlier this year, which you can read about more in the War Zone‘s initial story on those drills, reportedly hit a moving target ship. If true, this would be the country’s first known demonstration of an actual long-range anti-ship ballistic missile capability, which could significantly change the operational calculus for any potential opponent, including the United States, in the disputed maritime region and elsewhere in the Pacific.

The electromagnetic weapons which fry the human tissue of enemy troops "turned the mountain tops into a microwave oven" and made the Indian soldiers puke, international studies expert Jin Canrong told his students in Beijing.

The microwave weapons heat water molecules in the same way as the kitchen device, targeting water under the skin and producing a growing pain to the target from areas up to 0.6 miles away.

Taiwan will start work next week to build its fleet of domestically-developed submarines, the presidential office said on Friday, as the island claims it has the right to self-defense against any military threat from China.

The project will include eight submarines and will strengthen the island’s defenses, according to presidential office spokesman Xavier Chang. “This represents a new milestone in the national submarine manufacturing plan,” Chang said. President Tsai Ing-wen will attend a ceremony next Tuesday to kick off the work.

The program is part of Tsai’s military modernization and self-sufficiency plan. Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said in September, although without naming China, that the island has the right to self-defense and counterattack amid the “high frequency of harassment and threats from the enemy’s warships and aircraft this year.”

Taiwan’s military added at the time that it has “clearly defined” the procedures for a first response.

A September report by Republican senators alleged that Hunter Biden and other Biden family members had “cashed in” on Joe Biden’s vice presidency through a “vast financial network that connected them to foreign nationals and foreign governments across the globe”.

Two Senate Republicans - Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley of Iowa and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Ron Johnson have released a report allegedly based on newly obtained documents that shed light on close financial and business ties between Hunter Biden and a wealthy Communist-party linked Chinese tycoon, writes The Washington Times.

The documents, which form the basis of the 18 November report, were ostensibly received from Tony Bobulinski.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has hit back at the Five Eyes alliance and warned it not to interfere in China’s internal politics, after the intelligence coalition urged Beijing to reconsider its actions in Hong Kong.

Speaking at a daily media briefing on Thursday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian expressed his strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to the Five Eyes countries for their flagrant violations of international law and basic norms of international relations following comments made by the Western allies on Wednesday.

Whether they have five eyes or ten eyes, as long as they dare to harm China’s sovereignty, security, and development interests, they must be careful not to get their eyes poked out.

Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) on Wednesday released more details about Democratic presidential challenger Joe Biden’s son’s overseas business deals, along with alleged links to foreign individuals who have ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Moscow.

According to a news release from the two GOP senators, the new information cites new records that purport to show that the Biden family had even more connections to the Chinese regime as well as links between associates of Hunter Biden and the Russian government.

“Some of the additional findings from their investigation include millions of dollars sent from a Shanghai-based company with links to CEFC, which was effectively an extension of the communist Chinese government, to a close business associate of Hunter Biden,” they said. CEFC is a firm founded by billionaire Ye Jianming, who is believed to have ties with the CCP.

The next Pentagon chief could cement the US’ already hard defence line on China, with one contender suggesting that American forces could bolster deterrence with the ability to “sink all” Chinese vessels “within 72 hours” in the South China Sea.

Michele Flournoy, an undersecretary of defence in the Obama administration, has been touted as a possible defence secretary in the cabinet of US president-elect Joe Biden.

In an article in the journal Foreign Affairs in June, Flournoy said that as Washington’s ability and resolve to counter Beijing’s military assertiveness in the region declined, the US needed a solid deterrence to reduce the risk of “miscalculation” by China’s leadership.

As the US is reeling from the results of the elections, there is a lot of agonizing over how divided the nation has become. The country is seen as deeply split, with civil war no longer looking a purely hypothetical possibility.

There is no doubt that the US is going through one of the most difficult periods in its history. America’s political system – which was created to manage a much smaller, simpler, and homogenous nation – is clearly showing inadequacy in running the world’s third most populous country whose citizenry is characterized by an ever increasing multitude of identities.

Because of Donald Trump, Vice President Joe Biden thundered during the campaign, the U.S. “is more isolated in the world than we’ve ever been... America First has made America alone.”

Biden promised to repair relations with America’s allies. And he appears to have gone some distance to do so in the congratulatory phone call he received from Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan.

According to Suga, during the brief call, Biden said Article V of the U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty of 1960 covers the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, islands Japan controls but China claims as its own.

Two US long-range tactical bombers entered China’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ) on Tuesday in an apparent show of force, just as the Chinese navy was conducting a series of simultaneous massive drills. Aviation tracker Aircraft Spots reported that two US Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers left Andersen Air Force Base in Guam on Tuesday morning and entered China’s ADIZ over the East China Sea, after refuelling in flight during the mission.

Since the B1-B - which carries the biggest payload of any US bomber and - and is a departure from the fighter jets and spy planes the American forces have sent before on missions so close to the Chinese coast, the SCMP suggested that the US was sending a blunt warning to China.

The position paper builds on shifts in US global strategy in recent years toward what the Pentagon has called “great power competition” with Russia and China, which Washington sees as “revisionists” attempting to rewrite the US-led post-Cold War world order.

On Tuesday, Axios published an unclassified document from the US State Department’s Office of Policy Planning that lays out a series of goals the US must achieve if it wants to forestall the rise of China as a global superpower.

The document, titled “The Elements of the China Challenge,” bears a number of similarities to the 1947 “long telegram” written by George F. Kennan, a senior US diplomat to the Soviet Union, about how the US should address the rise of that socialist superpower. Kennan advised a policy of “containment” through regional alliances and steady undermining of the Soviet socialist system that became the basis of the Cold War that followed.

After his self-proclaimed victory as the new president-elect of the US, Joe Biden was congratulated by some heads of state and government. In this regard, on Wednesday (November 11), the Japanese Prime Minister, Yoshihide Suga, telephoned Biden with the intention of congratulating him on his victory and during the conversation they discussed several matters of strategic importance for both nations.

The American Democrat has strongly stated his commitment that the US will support Japan’s claims on the disputed Senkaku Islands. Biden and Suga also agreed to coordinate joint efforts related to several global challenges, such as combating the new coronavirus pandemic and global warming, as well as other environmental issues. However, the most important point is the issue of the islands due to the delicacy of the topic, which involves an old dispute between Japanese and Chinese.

Axios' Jonathan Swan reports that in Trump's final weeks in office the president plans to unveil a series of "hardline policies" on China with the ultimate aim of making it "politically untenable for the Biden administration to change course."

Very much akin to 'maximum pressure' on Iran, where the administration has also slapped any and all sanctions possible in order to try and make a Biden presidency's attempt to restore US participation in the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) near impossible, Trump wants to hem in the coming Biden administration and the ability for a Sino-US relations detente on a range of things like the Taiwan issue to China's intervention in Hong Kong to human rights to Chinese tech as a backdoor for spying.

Swan writes, "He'll try to make it politically untenable for the Biden administration to change course as China acts aggressively from India to Hong Kong to Taiwan, and the pandemic triggers a second global wave of shutdowns."

The repercussions of the new RCEP free-trade agreement between China and 14 other countries are huge. It creates a massive trading bloc in Asia that America, though its insular policies, will play no part in.

This weekend, 15 Asia-Pacific nations came together to sign the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a mammoth free-trade agreement that has been described as one of the largest in history.

It includes China, Japan, South Korea and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), as well as Australia and New Zealand. The deal solidifies a tariff-free bloc spanning 30 percent of the world’s GDP and 2.6 billion people.

China will strike back against any moves that undermine its core interests, its foreign ministry said on Friday, after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that Taiwan “has not been a part of China”.

China calls Taiwan the most sensitive and important issue in its ties with the United States, and has been angered by the Trump administration’s stepped up support for the Chinese-claimed yet democratically ruled island, such as arms sales.

Speaking in a U.S. radio interview on Thursday, Pompeo said: “Taiwan has not been a part of China”.

Fifteen Asia-Pacific countries on Sunday signed the world's biggest free trade deal, seen as a huge coup for China in extending its influence amid the pandemic.

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) has been struck as the world's financial markets have been destroyed by coronavirus.

China's is one of the few economies to have successfully weathered the storm, despite being the country from which the calamitous virus originated.

China represents Taiwan as the most delicate and critical issue in its ties with the United States and has been provoked by the Trump administration’s stepped-up care for the Chinese-claimed yet democratically ruled island, such as arms sales.

Talking in a US radio interview on Thursday, Pompeo declared: “Taiwan has not been a part of China”.

“That was recognized with the work that the Reagan administration did to lay out the policies that the United States has adhered to now for three-and-a-half decades,” he continued.

Chinese online retail giants Alibaba and JD.com have smashed last year’s record numbers for the world's largest annual shopping spree, known as Singles’ Day, generating around $115 billion in sales across their platforms.

The Covid-19 pandemic has not stopped Alibaba from nearly doubling its previous high. According to the e-commerce giant, its gross merchandise value (GMV), a figure that reflects the total value of orders across its platforms, reached $74.1 billion.

The Chinese government on Monday sidestepped questions on when it would congratulate United States President-elect Joe Biden on his election victory, with a Foreign Ministry spokesman saying only that China would act in "accordance with international practice."

More than 24 hours after US media declared Biden victorious, China remains one of the few major countries yet to send a message of congratulations to Biden and his team on their defeat of Donald Trump, leaving many to speculate whether officials there are waiting for the outgoing president to formally concede.

And with two months to go until Trump leaves office, Beijing may want to avoid anything that could further destabilize US-China relations.

Jack Ma might be China's richest man (for now, at least), but in the span of a week, Beijing's decision to postpone the planned IPO/spinoff of Alibaba's Ant Financial unit offering in Shanghai, preceded, according to reports, by onerous new regulatory measures (which, analysts say, could cut the company's value in half) has brought Ma to heel.

What could Ma, whose membership in the Communist Party is a matter of public record, have possibly done to provoke such a painful rebuke? He had the audacity to criticize China's financial regulations during an appearance at a high-profile industry conference in October. Ma's comments didn't make waves at the time, but nothing escapes the CCP.

Just like that, Hong Kong's last remaining bastion of political dissent has been crushed by a swift stomp of the CCP jackboot.

Hong Kong's pro-democracy lawmakers, many of whom have been pepper-sprayed, beaten and arrested with their sympathizers in the streets of what was formerly Asia's gateway to the West, have resigned en masse Wednesday from Hong Kong's legislative council (commonly referred to simply as the LegCo), the city's top legislative body,

It all started early Wednesday, with reports that Beijing was weighing new measures to try and exclude many of the council's 19 (soon-to-be former) Democratic lawmakers in the opposition by imposing a new 'loyalty test'. The report, initially carried in Chinese state media, sparked an uproar, with all 19 legislators threatening to resign if any of them were targeted. Sure enough, the HK government responded by immediately disqualifying four opposition leaders:

While a report estimated the maximum price tag to totally exclude Huawei at $4 billion, Swedish Digitalisation Minister Anders Ygeman argued that the cost of building the 5G network on an uncertain basis would be significantly higher.

Following a ruling by a Swedish administrative court to allow Chinese firm Huawei to participate in the expansion of the country's 5G network, Swedish telecoms regulator PTS halted the upcoming 5G spectrum auctions.

Earlier on Monday, the administrative court of Stockholm temporarily lifted the ban on the Chinese telecom giants Huawei and ZTE to participate in the expansion of the 5G network in Sweden, which Swedish Radio reporter Sven Carlsson described as a "partial victory" for Huawei.

Following the US, other Western countries are looking to increase their presence in the Pacific to counter Beijing. On Thursday, Germany’s Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said Berlin is looking to join Australia in the region for naval drills.

The defense minister said Germany will send a Navy ship to the region next year to join Australia for joint exercises. Echoing the rhetoric coming out of Washington, Kramp-Karrenbauer said China is undermining a “rules-based world order” and said Germany wants to increase its footprint in the Indo-Pacific by teaming up with “like-minded” allies.

“China has its own ideas about individual freedoms, human rights, our Western idea of democracy,” she said. Kramp-Karrenbauer also called China’s global infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative, a “challenge we have to react to.”

On Monday, China declined to congratulate Joe Biden as the “winner” of the US 2020 presidential election, saying the outcome of the vote was still to be determined.

While incumbent Donald Trump is yet to concede (if ever) and has launched several legal challenges, many world leaders prematurely congratulated Joe Biden and running mate Kamala Harris after the Democrats were declared winners at the weekend and spontaneous celebrations erupted across American cities, AFP reported.

Trump’s four years in the White House have been marked by a costly trade war and increasingly icy relations with China, with the two superpowers sparring over areas from the alleged blame for the COVID-19 pandemic to Beijing’s sovereignty over the South China Sea, as well as what the West claims is China’s allegedly ” bad human rights record in Xinjiang and Hong Kong”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is refusing to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden upon his projected election victory on the grounds that there are still 'legal processes' to complete.

President Trump is still refusing to concede the presidential election to Biden, claiming the election is not over.

Russia would only recognise a new US president on confirmation of 'official results', according to Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Taiwan’s Naval Command on Monday (Nov. 9) confirmed media reports that a contingent of U.S. Marines have arrived at the invitation of Taiwan’s military and will begin training Taiwanese troops for four weeks starting that day, marking the first public acknowledgment of U.S. soldiers training in Taiwan in over 40 years.

Starting on Monday, the Marine Raiders, the Marines’ special operations soldiers, will begin training Taiwanese Marines in assault boat and speedboat infiltration operations at the Tsoying Naval Base in Kaohsiung, reported UDN. This is the first interaction between Taiwanese troops and those of an allied country since the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) put a halt to such exchanges about seven or eight months ago.

The Navy Command stated that this case is a ‘routine Taiwan-U.S. military exchange and cooperation training.” It said that it hopes that through this exchange with U.S. Marines, it can improve the combat capabilities of its own troops.

Shady Biden Port Deals Placed US At Risk From Russian, Chinese Club-K Container Missiles; Biden’s TIGER Grants Set The Table For GULFTAINER

Click Here to Listen to Lt. General Thomas McInerney, (3-Stars) U.S. Air Force (Retired), Author and Researcher Mary Fanning on this topic with Worldview Radio host Brannon Howse. Brannon's guest is also Former National Security Council Staffer for President Donald Trump Rich Higgins join us to give us his thoughts on what it would mean for America if Joe Biden becomes President due to his a national security threat due to being compromised by the Communist Chinese and government of Russia.

“The aim of this film is to break a silence: the United States and China may well be on the road to war, and nuclear war is no longer unthinkable,” Pilger says in his 2016 documentary The Coming War on China, which you can watch free on Youtube here or on Vimeo here.

The first shock on Election Day didn’t come from the U.S. Rather, it was the news that China suspended Ant Group’s $35 billion initial public offering.

It’s a PR nightmare for Beijing to call Ant’s IPO off on the eve of what would be the world’s largest public listing - especially after Ant spurned New York to list in Shanghai and Hong Kong. It came just days after co-founder Jack Ma criticized regulators for being out of touch and mocked banks as pawnshops. The financial impact was big enough to cause the Hong Kong dollar to fall Tuesday.

The US, Japan, India, and Australia began their largest joint naval drills in over a decade on Tuesday with an eye towards Beijing. The four countries make up the informal alliance known as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or the Quad, a group the US is hoping to turn into a more formal security alliance.

The Indian-led Malabar drills began as an annual joint US-Indian operation in 1992. Japan joined the exercise on a permanent basis in 2015, and Australia last participated in the drills in 2007.

Rising anger toward the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is fueling calls in the United States for “decoupling” the world’s two leading economies. But decoupling is a strategy that not only would impose severe economic costs on both countries, it also would weaken a crucial buffer that dampens bilateral strategic disputes. The probable outcome would be a substantial increase in tensions at best, and a calamitous military clash at worst.

There is little doubt that U.S.-PRC relations have deteriorated during Donald Trump’s presidency. The deterioration began early on with pointed U.S. accusations that China engages in a variety of “unfair” trade practices. Washington has pursued a more nationalistic economic course that some observers describe as a full-fledged trade war with Beijing. One manifestation of that attitude is an effort to reduce U.S. dependence on China as the source of certain important goods, such as electronic components and pharmaceuticals.

Footage out of China shows people in Wuhan dancing in close proximity in a nightclub without a face mask in sight even as other European countries enter into a debilitating second lockdown.

The clip, published by France 24, highlights revelers who are not wearing masks or engaging in any kind of ‘social distancing’ dancing the night away.

Could the love affair between Tesla and the Chinese Communist Party be drifting toward an unceremonious end?

From the looks of an editorial published in Xinhua on Tuesday, that could very well be the call. The country's state owned news agency called Tesla "unreasonable and arrogant" in an article published on Tuesday that addressed Tesla's recall of 30,000 imported Model S and Model X vehicles in the country.

“The automaker refused to acknowledge its defect outside China while taking the recall in the market, blaming the user behavior and pressure from regulatory bodies. Tesla needs to learn first to abide by the local regulations and protect legitimate rights of the car owners,” the editorial said, according to Bloomberg.

Recall, it was about a week ago we first highlighted a massive recall Tesla had to undergo in China due to lingering, years old questions about the safety of Model S and Model X suspensions.

Street lamps that can wirelessly charge phones have been installed on the streets of Wuhan in central China.

In the video, a smartphone was put on a lamp and started charging.

According to a worker from the local construction bureau, more than 60 lamps which can be used as a wireless charging stations have been installed. The lamps can also monitor pedestrian flow and alarm.

China is again being accused of a blatant landgrab along the disputed Himalayan high altitude border region not far from where Chinese and Indian Army troops previously clashed.

This time it's the country of Nepal that has accused China of stealing over 150 hectares sovereign of its territory, or about 1.5 square kilometers. Leaders of the tiny country wedged between the major regional powers of India and China made the explosive charge to the Daily Telegraph early this week.

"Why should China come over into Nepal, when China is already sixty times the size of our small country?" a lawmaker in the Nepali Congress Party, Jeevan Bahadur Shahi, said. However, it's believed that thus far neither Kathmandu nor Beijing has officially acknowledged it because it would harm trade ties - a much more worrisome prospect for the Nepal side.

A project to construct China’s first undersea high-speed rail tunnel in eastern Zhejiang Province was approved on Monday, according to The Paper digital newspaper. Investments in the project will amount to over $4 billion.

Construction of the Jintang undersea tunnel is expected to start this year, while the overall project will take six to seven years to complete.

With a maximum depth of 78 meters and a diameter of 14 meters, the 16.2km-long tunnel will be the world’s longest undersea tunnel for high-speed rail upon completion. It will link the Jintang island of Zhoushan and the coastal area of Ningbo.

The MSM, Democrats and the Biden Campaign are complaining that the Tony Bobulinski story is a lie. They want Americans to believe that Hunter and Joe Biden are men of character and Bobulinski is the man lacking integrity. Unfortunately for this corrupt group, we have evidence that proves Bobulinski right.

Yaacov Apelbaum at the Illustrated Primer reports:

Several MSM outlets have been challenging the validity of Tony Bobulinski’s claims regarding Joe Biden’s and his brother Jim’s involvement with Hunter’s China business activity. The latest NY Post forensic evaluation confirmed that Bobulinski’s email was legit. But apparently, this is not good enough for propaganda outlets like CNN, NYT and WaPo which continue to challenge these emails and any claim of “family” involvement.